Dislike

 The use of "likes" and "dislikes" was always a little foreign to me, but I thought it was a brilliant invention when Twitter rolled it out.

Since that time, it has become a standard feature on social media.  Heck, even the communication app common amongst college students, GroupMe, allows you to heart individual texts.  iPhone allows you "react" to texts.  The feature has become ubiquitous and loved.

That was why it was so strange to me when it was announced this week that YouTube was testing the removal of the dislike button.

YouTube removes Dislike count

Now, if one were cynically minded, they would probably think back, not so long ago, to the most disliked video ever, that just so happened to be from YouTube itself.  That might be why they are doing it.

But my mind went somewhere else.

As always, it went to media and politics.  

This seems to me a blow to, let's call it, internet democracy.  Likes and dislikes are a bellweather of public sentiment.  If we can't tell organizations and politicians(in a public way) that we dislike what they are saying, that's dangerous to public discourse.  Increasingly I view online platforms as the new town square.  People just don't go out and talk politics like they used to.  There is a place for that now, and it's called the internet.  I think this is a dangerous precedent and one that politicians and legacy media orgs will be 100% behind.